


Time Waits

by squanderbird



Category: No. 6 (Anime & Manga), No. 6 - Asano Atsuko
Genre: angstfest!, come on you all know you wrote one, do i ever write anything but angst, major series spoilers, some of us just never got around to posting it, the 'nezumi returns!' fic, the answer is no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-09
Updated: 2012-08-09
Packaged: 2017-11-11 18:57:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squanderbird/pseuds/squanderbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The years pass, and Shion is twenty next month. </p><p> </p><p>A future!return fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Waits

The years pass. They have a habit of doing that. Time equalises and yawns open; bones replenish, cells die and regenerate; the human body re-coats itself until everything is new. This is not the mouth he touched, these are not the hands that reached. This is not the body he knew. All fresh, another start Shion doesn't want, because he's tired of false beginnings that lead to inevitable conclusions. 

He drowns himself in work, coaxing things to grow in drying soil that cracks like the myriad patterns in a battered ceiling, intricate as stars. The West District doesn't exist anymore, because the wall came down. They have pieces of it on display in the reassigned official square; spattered with scribbled art that the pristine NO.6 never knew before. It's called graffiti, Shion remembers, and the mighty concrete looks vindicated of its power these days, crumbling, littered with love letters and epitaphs for victims; those who died by parasites, those who died by the state, those who died alone and unnamed. Safu's name was added one night in regulation ink as he passed by, bound houseward. 

Now, couples walk hand-in-hand through the amalgamation of buildings; she's old West District, he's old dystopian cityscape. Shion only notices in small details, and even those are disappearing as they all dress alike now. So many nows. His mother still runs her bakery, churning out rustic pastries, cheerful as ever, and he moved out last year into a sparse flat closer to the reconstruction committee offices. He has to update her often. She hates being without news of him too long, aftershock paranoia. He reads all he can, educates himself, requests to specialise in forestry and the cultivation thereof. 

He falls asleep to the sound of reconstructed breathing beside him, loses the thread of imagining - skin and want - in the disorientation of waking. Were his eyes light grey, or does he remember a darker tinge? 

When someone commented, on his first day in the steel cornucopia of bureacracy, on his 'uh, unusual colouring', he'd replied simply, 'Parasite bees, not fashion,' and left the receptionist to choke on her soapy-flavoured tea, curiosity and resentment for his very survival in the place of others flooding his wake. 

Nezumi would be proud. You had to learn, to generate this kind of chaos. 

Shion's had time to learn. 

Every six months, he gleans information; _he's alive_ , says Inukashi, oddly peaceable among her canines, _that's all I ever know._

The years pass, and Shion is twenty next month. 

* 

He hopes. The symmetry of it would be too right; a four year gap the last time, surely it would be only correct. It's logical, reasonable. Nezumi has become his marker, his way of noting the days that bloom up and wither, and it has been four years, and Shion is nearly a man now.

He hopes, and the _longing_ \- 

It doesn't happen.

*  
The punch makes Nezumi crumple; stagger, back ricocheting against the door, the number plate jabbing at his shoulder blades too, from how he winces inward. Good. He stares down at Shion, who's wild-eyed and breath heavy, shaking like a miniature earthquake, irises glittering scarlet hard and condensed with rage. 

"Bastard," he bites out, "You forgot my birthday." 

And it sounds childish, petty, sounds like Shion expected him to care, but it's the only vocalisation of the time lost he can bite out, struggling against the need to implode and cry and cry like he's sixteen again because he's sixteen again he feels sixteen again and as unsure and in awe and afraid -

Nezumi shrugs, shoulder roiling and contracting like the sea, slowly unwraps the scarf muffling his neck. 

"I never forgot," he mutters, "I got held up."

Even sullen and uncertain as the silence drags, drags, even exhausted and with a bruise already bursting up along the cheekbone - even then, he's beautiful, gorgeous and feral in a way that you can't reach. Proud little rat, stood in an inner city corridor, waiting to be invited in. The angry ridges of sixteen-year-old contours have sharpened even further, razoring a gaunt beauty and honing it, all knife elbows and bladed collarbones. Older, harder; his bones could cut you, but his eyes are softer, gunmetal soothed out into waiting stormclouds. He would have been - was - twenty six months ago exactly. The three months extra over four years re-defined agony, numbing as the falling snow outside. 

"And anyway, it's not like you bothered with mine."

"I did," Shion says, kicking half-heartedly at the bag by his feet, clattering out research notes, "I - well, I - I went and - oh, I went back home and left a message there. And I made you a new scarf."

"What?" 

"It's in a drawer inside. I didn't know where to send it." 

"Oh."

"It's green. You like green. You used to." 

The pause is a visceral reaction. 

"Shion. I really did get held up. I tried to send a message. You're not going to hit me again, are you?" 

His hair is longer, slipping past shoulders to dip in the curve of his spine. Fringe too long. He hasn't bothered to cut it. 

"No."

"You've gotten better."

The bruise winks in the half-light. 

"I've had time to practise. Four years."

"I'm hungry, and cold. Are you going to let me in, or are we going to glare at each other for any longer?" Nezumi shivers, scowling a little, "Because I hate to hurt your feelings, but civilisation still isn't warm."

The touch comes from nowhere; Shion would think up some metaphor about lightning and a distant night when they were twelve if he could think: instead, he freezes, condensing into his left cheek, where Nezumi's hand is. Two boys who know each other, reaching out for the thems they've never held. 

"You are, though. Shion."

His name in Nezumi's mouth is a brilliant travesty. 

"How long does it take for the human body to collapse from hypothermia?" Nezumi points out after a long pause, spiky as ever.

"Not this long," Shion responds, “If you like, I can leave you out here and we can see,” because he's grown some claws, too -- rapidly kittenish as they may be. 

Opening the flat door isn't forgiveness - isn't yet. 

*

Shion clutters the silence with words, inanity and profundity clashing in a babble of painfully attempted insouciance. He notes what Nezumi will see; the bookshelf of elderly classics, the botany drawings pasted to the walls, the faded cotton bedspread in a weathered grey stripe - all the evidence that, despite everything, Shion has gotten on with the business of living. This has not been a wasted four years; he has pushed the gap this boy left as far back as he could, made friends, drunk coffee and those bright liquor shots, danced in the streets, feet weights of exhilaration. He's been hungover and cooked and - 

"I haven't been lonely," Shion says, "I have had, you know, a life. I read a lot more, and I learnt how to fight better, and once I nearly had sex. So."

Nezumi breaks down into hysterics. 

"What's so funny?" Shion demands, whilst Nezumi tries to form a reponse and fails, hands clinging tightly to the wooden countertop. Squeaking curiosity, and a bundle of fur peeps out from behind the breadbin. 

"Hamlet," Nezumi greets the small mouse. It bites him. Shion sniggers, petty vengeances that slices guilty and empowering, and Nezumi frowns, flicker of rejection behind thin eyelids, silenced. He glances over to the desk, nods towards the drawers.

"Is it in there?" 

Shion nods. 

"Can I --?"

"It's yours." 

The penultimate drawer creaks tense; everything and nothing reverberating in silent aftermath. Shion stares at the green wool, crotchety warm against Nezumi's hands. It has been unravelled and redone many times, the threads warped with repetitive attempts at perfection. Shion picks out each echo of a mistake and his heart shrinks, contracting with confusion and a strange emptiness. 

"Welcome home."

His voice is stripped, bare, beyond pretence. 

It's when he's enveloped in that smell of elderly pages and greasepaint that Shion gives in to hope, face squished reassuring against the bone of a skinny shoulder. Nezumi, Nezumi; conjured coporeal out of imagination. His hands pick at sleeves, pressing at the skin beneath, logical mind categorising evidence -

He cries because Nezumi's real.


End file.
